Again I have something of a vested interest in this poem. We have to drive through the Wye Valley to visit my uncle in Hereford and when I was thirteen we went on a school trip to Tintern Abby, so it’s an area that’s familiar to me.
Like Coleridge, Wordsworth seems to have a love for his surroundings. Lines also has similarities to other Wordsworth poems, such as The Daffodils were he takes nature with him and it provides comfort wherever he goes, “I have owed to them / In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,” and “my spirit has returned to thee” whenever the rest of the world is dark. Nature is not just something outside him, but something he has internalised and is unique to him.
It is not, however, just the “wild seclusion” from the rest of humanity that is important because “For I have learned / To look on nature, not as in the hour / Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes / The still, sad music of humanity,”. Although nature does allow quiet and peace, it is not to escape from humanity but to hear and understand it better. It is only from looking upon nature that we can know ourselves.
I agree: nature is not *only* an escape in this poem (though it does provide a counter to the weariness of the world). It is also a way of connecting to humanity. My question is about "looking at nature": does it matter, as Bate argues, that Wordsworth trades looking for hearing or feeling? If looking is the dominant mode of the picturesque, is there something more ecological about hearing? Going even further, how is Wordsworth's relationship to sound different from Coleridge's?
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